Buchanan Dam LCRA Construction Payroll — Burnet County

The Lower Colorado River Authority built Hamilton Dam (later Buchanan Dam) and Roy B. Inks Dam in the 1930s, employing hundreds of workers during the Great Depression. A National Youth Administration camp operated at Buchanan and Inks dams in 1938; a fish hatchery followed at Inks Dam in 1939. Depression-era construction payroll folklore sometimes places emergency strongboxes along Colorado River dam sites where weekly wages moved as cash. Lake Buchanan became the uppermost Highland Lake in the chain above Marble Falls. Coordinates mark Buchanan Dam on the Colorado River in northwestern Burnet County.